


Pour Away the Ocean

by Kroki_Refur



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-12
Updated: 2007-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kroki_Refur/pseuds/Kroki_Refur
Summary: Set after AHBL II. Happy ever after isn't really the Winchester way.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Pour Away the Ocean

When Dean dies, there’s no happy ending for Sam.  
  
It’s not just that Dean is dead ( _Dean is dead Dean is dead_ ), although that, by itself, would be enough to guarantee no happy ever afters, because if there’s a place where the most important person in the world can die and there can still be a storybook ending, Sam doesn’t want to go there, doesn’t want to go _near_ there. But Dean’s not just dead ( _Dean is dead Sam is alone_ ), Dean’s in _hell_ , and even if it wasn’t all because of Sam, it wouldn’t, it _couldn’t_ be allowed to happen. Sam likes to think of himself as a forgiving person, sympathetic (or did back when he ever thought anything that wasn’t _Dean’s dead Dean’s in hell_ ), and he wouldn’t wish hell on his worst enemy.   
  
This is not his worst enemy. This is _Dean_. _Dean is dead_.  
  
Sam knows, in the vague way that he knows anything these days ( _Dean is dead_ ), that he’s gone crazy. He’s not sure how crazy he’s gone, but he sees it in the way people look at him, sometimes cross the street to avoid him, and sometimes he catches a glimpse of his face in a reflective surface (there are no mirrors in his motel room, slivers of glass on the floor and he’s not sure what happened but he thinks it might be his fault) and he sees why. It doesn’t matter that he’s crazy, though, as long as he’s got enough of his mind left to get the job done. It doesn’t matter if he ends up howling at the moon, as long as he doesn’t _fail_ ( _Dean is in hell_ ).  
  
The problem is, he thinks he might be failing, because he’s spent a year looking for ways to break a deal with a demon, and another period of time (he doesn’t even know how long, Dean is _dead_ ( _Dean is in hell_ ) and he doesn’t know how _long_ ) looking for ways to get someone out of hell, and he’s good at research, he’s _good_ at it, but there’s nothing, there’s _nothing_.   
  
Sam hasn’t believed in happy ever after since November the second, two thousand and five. There’s no happy ending for Sam, and there never will be. But Sam can’t fail.  
  
\----  
  
One day, Sam finds Bobby on the doorstep of his motel room, and Sam’s not even sure how Bobby found him, Sam can’t have told him where he was because, when he thinks about it, he realises he doesn’t even know himself, doesn’t know the name of the town (doesn’t know the date, doesn’t know when he last slept, _Dean is dead_ ). When Sam opens the door, Bobby’s face goes pale, which Sam thinks might mean something, but he doesn’t care about Bobby’s face, so he doesn’t bother to try and work out what.  
  
Bobby comes in, sits down, talks. Sam hears the words, some of them, _sleep_ and _eat_ and _take care of yourself_ , but he doesn’t listen, because it’s not relevant, because _take care of yourself_ doesn’t have any bearing on _get Dean out of hell_. He’s thinking about a ritual he’s heard rumours about and what the best way to track it down would be when Bobby says _there’s no way to do what you’re trying to do_ , and Sam hears _that_.  
  
Later, Sam tries to remember how Bobby left the room, but all he knows is that Bobby was there and then he was gone. Sam has bruises on his knuckles and his throat is sore like he’s been screaming, and he thinks that might have something to do with it, but he doesn’t know for sure. After that, the motel clerk throws him out for causing a disturbance, and Sam wonders if he should ask what the disturbance was, but it doesn’t matter, none of it matters. There are bruises on Sam’s knuckles, and Dean is in hell, and there’s no happy, but there is an ever after.  
  
\----  
  
When Sam was a kid, Dean would sometimes tell him stories, but they never started with _once upon a time_. Sam first heard _happy ever after_ at elementary school, and he didn’t know what it meant. When the teacher – Sam used to remember all his teachers’ names, dozens of schools but he knew them, he _knew_ them, and now he doesn’t even remember the name of the first girl he kissed – explained it to him, he thought it was the best thing he ever heard, until he went home and told Dean, and Dean’s lip curled, and Dean was always right so _happy ever after_ was wrong. And maybe Sam wrote a few stories in his notebook, and maybe they started with _once upon a time_ , but Dean was always right, and he was right that time, too.  
  
\----  
  
Sam is missing the pinky finger on his right hand because a witch doctor in Louisiana used it in a spell that didn’t work. He has a tattoo of a pentacle over his heart, and an angry scar on the back of his neck that matches the one that cuts across his spine. He has a head full of Latin and Greek and Sanskrit, and a bag full of herbs and books, and sometimes he wonders if killing himself would annul the deal Dean made, but he can’t risk trying it because if it doesn’t work, there’ll be nobody left to get Dean out.   
  
Sam’s gone crazy, but that doesn’t matter. Dean is in hell, and Sam’s going to get him out.  
  
\----  
  
There’s a voicemail on Sam’s phone, which is weird, because he doesn’t remember it ringing. It’s a woman’s voice, unfamiliar, angry. _It’s been eighteen months_ , she says, and _do you think Dean would have wanted this for you?_ Sam listens to the words, but none of them are _I know how to get your brother out of hell_ , so he doesn’t hear them.  
  
When the message is over, Sam checks the caller ID and sees the name _Jo_. He thinks he might have known a Jo once, so he listens to the message again. _Do you think Dean would have wanted this for you?_ says Jo, and Sam thinks that she just doesn’t get it. What Dean wants isn’t relevant. Dean is in hell.  
  
Some time passes (Sam doesn’t know how much), and Sam is probably in a different town when he realises he’s lost his phone. He doesn’t get a new one.  
  
\----  
  
The last month before Dean died ( _Dean is in hell_ ), Sam would sometimes scream at people on the street. It made no sense to him, that people could walk and speak and breathe when Dean was going to _die_ , that they could buy gas and laugh and watch TV like nothing was even happening. Sam thinks maybe he was already crazy then, a little, but he’s pretty sure he’s crazier now.  
  
Sam doesn’t scream at people on the street any more. He barely remembers how to form words that aren’t _in nomine patris_ or _nam et si ambulavero in valle umbrae mortis_. He still walks and breathes, and he supposes that sometimes he must buy gas because the car still runs, so he wonders if maybe he should scream at himself, but he’s not sure he remembers how to do that, either.  
  
\----  
  
Sam’s gums have been bleeding for a while, and the skin of his hands looks yellow. He’s missing two teeth that he doesn’t know how he lost, and one day he notices that his belt is too loose to hold his jeans up, even when he puts it on the last hole. There’s rope in the car, and Sam fetches it but it takes him two days to remember what he wanted it for. He thinks maybe he looks like a monk with a rope belt, and then he sees himself in a store window and realises that that’s not what he looks like at all.  
  
Sam’s got a knife scar on the inside of his forearm. He wonders who made it. He wonders if it was him.  
  
Sam’s missing the pinky finger on his right hand; he has a pentacle tattooed over his heart and an angry scar on the back of his neck that matches the one that cuts across his spine. He doesn’t forget how he got those, and he remembers that none of them worked. Sam’s missing the pinky finger on his right hand, and Dean is in hell, and there’s no happy, but there is an ever after.   
  
\----  
  
When Sam finally hits on the solution, it’s so simple he almost chokes. He asks a man on the street what state he’s in, and it takes him three tries before the man understands him, though Sam’s not sure what he’s doing wrong. Georgia is a long way from Wyoming, and then again, it’s just a step, so easy, so simple.  
  
There’s a man waiting at the gates to the cemetery, and Sam’s brain supplies the word _Bobby_ , but all Sam sees is the gun pointed at him. _I can’t let you do it_ , says the man.  
  
Sometimes, Sam thinks that when Dean brought him back, he came back broken. Mostly, he doesn’t think at all. The gun’s warm in his hand as he moves between the graves, and he thinks that if he looked back, he might see someone dead more recently than all these long-rotted skeletons, that he might see the body of someone who he must have once known, who must have cared about him enough to hesitate on the trigger.  
  
Sam doesn’t look back. It isn't relevant.  
  
\----  
  
It’s like last time, the sound and the light pouring out of the gates, flickering figures wandering, thick demon-smoke infecting the world. It’s like last time, except that last time Dad was smiling, and Dean isn’t smiling, he’s staring down at Sam lying on the grass and he isn’t smiling, he looks horrified.  
  
Sam doesn’t have the strength to close the gates of hell by himself, doesn’t even have the strength to stand up, and there’s no-one here to help him, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s the end of the world, and Sam supposes that that’s not really a happy ending, not _really_ , but he doesn’t have a word for the way he feels right now that means anything else.   
  
Dean’s still dead, and he doesn’t stay long, melting into white light with the horror still on his face. The demons keep pouring out long after he’s gone, and it’s morning before they’re done, and Sam can already smell the smoke, the world burning to ashes around him. The sun rises, but the sky has turned red, and Sam lies on his back on the grass and laughs.


End file.
